Biography celebrates Nick Coleman, a giant in Minnesota politics

Nick Coleman's bust is unveiled on April 27, 1983, in the Rotunda of the Capitol, at the foot of the staircase leading to the Senate chamber. (Pioneer Press file photo)

After receiving the prestigious "Mr. Tommy" award as the most popular member of the graduating class of 1949 at the College of St. Thomas, Coleman Smiled and wielded the first of many leadership gavels. (Special Collections, University of St. Thomas)

John Milton was a new Minnesota senator in 1973 when powerful AFL-CIO President Dave Roe surprised him by saying: "Coleman says you have to carry the minimum-wage bill. You aren't as threatening as some of these other guys."

Roe was referring to Nick Coleman, newly elected Senate majority leader who was one of the most important men in Minnesota that decade.

Coleman, a charming, savvy politician born into St. Paul's Irish Catholic community in 1925, led the first DFL state Senate majority in 114 years - and his influence was felt long after his death in 1981.

Coleman's rise to power, his private life and his place in state and national politics, as well as some history of the state DFL and intraparty fights, are detailed in Milton's new biography, "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-1981" (Ramsey County Historical Society Press, $34.99).

Milton, a former Ramsey County commissioner, was 35 and living in North Oaks in 1972 when Coleman asked him to run for state Senate in the new District 49.

"Nick recruited me under false pretenses. He needed a sacrificial lamb, but I won," Milton recalled with a laugh. "The first morning I reported to the state Capitol, I wore a turtleneck. Nick explained the dress code, slapped a tie over my turtleneck, and that's the way I was sworn in.

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Milton, who now lives near Afton, left the Senate in 1977 because he wasn't making enough money to support his family. But he remembers his years in the Senate as "an earth-shaking experience in my life."

In 2006, Milton was lobbying at the Capitol on behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. When he walked past a bust of Coleman, at the bottom of the staircase leading to the Senate chamber, he realized what a giant role Coleman had played in Minnesota politics.

Milton asked Coleman's son, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, if anyone was working on a biography of his dad.

"Chris said he'd be excited if I'd take it on," Milton said.

Milton spent about 5-1/2 years researching and writing his 656-page book. The list of those he interviewed runs seven pages, including members of the Coleman family, politicians from both parties and journalists. Former Vice President Walter Mondale wrote the foreword.

"For the Good of the Order" is not an objective look at Coleman. Milton admired the Navy veteran and College of St. Thomas graduate who was always impeccably dressed.

Coleman, first elected to the state Senate in 1962 when liberals were in the minority, had to use all his skills as majority leader to navigate between the newly elected Young Turks and some of the more conservative members of the caucus.

"Coleman's great skill as a leader allowed us to come together," Milton said. "Like Lyndon Johnson did in the U.S. Senate, Nick sat down with people in our caucus and got consensus. Nick was very bright, and he empowered people. Few of us had legislative experience, but Nick figured out what had to be done and who would do it. His Irish sense of humor helped. He could make a joke without making the person feel bad."

Legislation they tackled, Milton writes, ranged from consumer protection, corrections reform and a commission for the disabled to expanded programs for nutrition and food stamps, family planning and health services, strengthening of the economic status of women, and the state's first minimum-wage law, as well as tax credits for senior citizens and programs for the working poor.

Coleman was especially proud of legislation that helped the poor, Milton says, because Coleman had come from a modest background.

One of Coleman's most forward-looking acts was adding the words "sexual orientation" to a human-rights bill that passed the Senate in 1973, the first time a legislative body in the U.S. passed such a bill. It died in the House and wasn't signed into law until 1993.

PRIVATE LIFE INCLUDED

Milton doesn't shy away from writing about Coleman's private life. He did long interviews with Coleman's wives, Bridget Coleman and Deborah Howell, both of whom have died.

"Bridget was remarkable, with a great sense of humor," Milton said. "Before she was married, she wanted to be a doctor.

Nick and Bridget Coleman in 1962 with five of their children during Nick's first campaign for the Minnesota Senate. Clockwise from upper left: Bridget, Nicholas Joseph, Brendan, Patrick, Nick, Chris, and Meghan (Micki). (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)

While Nick was concentrating on his political career, Bridget was doing all the difficult things - working with kids, church and schools and being a political wife."

Bridget and Nick Coleman had seven children: Nicholas, Patrick, Brendan, Meghan, Christopher and Emmett. A daughter, Maureen, died at age 3.

"Nick wasn't around much when his kids were growing up," Milton says. "We were all so busy trying to save the world, we didn't have time for our kids. Divorce statistics from those days are jarring."

Coleman met Howell in late 1970 when she was covering the Capitol for the Minneapolis Star. (She was later Pioneer Press executive editor). After Coleman's divorce from Bridget, he married Howell in 1975.

"Deborah changed Nick's perspective and helped him broaden out," Milton said. "He was a very urban guy, and she helped him become an outdoors person. She introduced him to travel and seeing other cultures." Howell also urged Coleman to see a therapist about his drinking.

All the Coleman children were interviewed by Milton except the oldest, Nicholas (Nick Jr.), a former writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press. He didn't explain to Milton why he wouldn't talk about his father.

By end of 1980, Nick Coleman was in his last weeks as a Minnesota senator and leader of the DFL majority. A photo taken at the time shows he was bald because of chemotherapy for leukemia.

"This may have been just another press photo," Milton writes, "but it captured Nick as someone who was not to be trifled with at the final meeting of the legislative committee at which he orchestrated the enactment of the progressive DFL agenda of the 1970s."

Coleman died March 5, 1981. The Cathedral of St. Paul was nearly overflowing for his funeral, during which then-Mayor George Latimer paid the leader this tribute:

"God's finger touched him. He chose not to hoard those gifts. He spent them, not always wisely, but fully. As a public man his gifts were well noted: His wit; quick, deep intelligence; handsome bearing; and the eloquence unique to his heritage. But he had much more. He knew history and human nature well enough to know that the lot of mankind has been for the most part 'brutish, short and mean.' But because he bore the great Irish heart of a poet and shared the hope that is America, he refused to submit to a future no better than the past. He chose politics as the way to that future."

Mary Ann Grossmann can be reached at 651-228-5574.

IF YOU GO

What: May 7 publication party for "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-1981"